Incentive to buy pizza

After playing till level 14 in the Campaign, I found that I have no incentive to buy pizza! I love this game, but my items are consistently good enough to win all maps within 3 tries or less and I'm not interested in MP (I get stressed). I know that I'm a part of the more frugal audience, but there have been other F2P games were I spent money because they gave me something I wanted, the main examples being Tribes: Ascend and Path of Exile.

Don't get me wrong, I really, really like the fact that I don't HAVE to spend any money, but I'd like to support the developers and now it just feels like giving a donation instead of buying something. For example, Club Membership sounds nice, but it's temporary (buying temporary things just feels wrong, I never buy boosts or equivalent stuff in other games) and it's pretty expensive too. Also, in my 20 hours of playing I haven't seen a single item in the club membership box that I couldn't just buy or find myself (just 1 rare, once, and I didn't even like that one) I think permanent membership at a reasonable price point (20-30$ worth of pizza) would sell better. I also would never buy chests, because at worst you waste money and at best you make the game easy.

It could be just me, but I'd thought I'd state my views because I love this game and it's everything I hoped it to be since waiting for my beta key since last year.

 

Not really, maybe when my other adventures are all done, but by that time most of them are way too lowlevel probably.

 

Four things:

First, those "treasure hunt" adventures are worth the price of admission. Since you've progressed so far, you've seen the zombie and tree enemies, right? Or, more accurately, you saw them out-of-context in arena levels. In the treasure hunts, by golly you get a good introduction to the beasts (and plenty others) and what they add to the game. There is real content in the things. And, even if you play them later on, don't forget that "being low-level" isn't much of an issue in this game: you ARE replaying lower-level adventures for the loot, right? The equip system (with talents) means you'll always want a variety of items.

Second, I gotta say that the alternate figures are attractive. A lot of people would like a gender selection option at a minimum for their characters, and until (and unless) that happens, their only choice is to spend a little pizza.

Third, when you speak of chests, have you purchased regular ones for gold? If you haven't, I'd encourage you to do so, and then see whether you still believe "at worst you waste money and at best you make the game easy." Personally, I buy chests (for gold) because they give me new types of cards I may not have used in a build yet. They surely don't make the game easy, because the equip system (again, with talents) requires you to apply strategy to use any of the items.

Fourth, I'm glad you're enjoying the game so much. Perhaps this should be my first note, actually.

 

Treasure Hunts are great, yes, but I will say that the primary draw for pizza purchases is multiplayer. If you don't care about being competitive in multiplayer, then... no, there really isn't much incentive to buy pizza.

The game gives you enough free pizza to unlock four Treasure Hunts (of seven, currently), if you don't spend it on a character model instead. This is what I do with my free pizza. While there will eventually be far more of them in the game, for just starting out it gives the opportunity to pick four Treasure Hunts that you find most interesting / important and enjoy them. Does this make purchasing the remaining Treasure Hunts that much more appealing? I can't really say.

The pizza chests, in both incarnations, I find to be really poor value, personally. That other 30 pizza you get to open a magnificent chest I just break down into gold and open regular chests instead. I've never failed to get better results that way than what the pizza chest guarantees. Now, again, to remain competitive in multiplayer, especially early on, these pizza chests will be vital. But if that's not your thing...

 

Skins and adventures for sure if you feel content with pve. That said i don't think they are trying to force and money out of you if you are sated with what you got in pve kinda how PoE did it. But just out of curiosity what did you get in PoE then since they are basically fluffy stuff only?

 

Yes, it sounds like the treasure hunts are better value than I expected. I'm not replaying low-level adventures, because why should I when I can just play the ones on my level to progress and get exp? Btw, does loot only depend on character level or on dungeon level too?

Nope I haven't but I assume they are the same ones I open one of after every map only worse than the "final" one in each adventure. I can understand that buying a chest for gold once in a while can be fun and might give some fun/useful items, but if you buy a lot (which you would if you want to spend pizza for them, because they are only what, 4 pizza for a chest?) your items will get a lot better on average. Probably it's because I'm not at end game yet, I can see myself buying chests at endgame, if I already have the most powerful items and just want to play different strategies.

Extra stash space and the ability to label your stash tabs. They gave you a reasonable amount of stash space from the start, but if you played a bit longer and made multiple characters, having the ability to label them and have some extra space came in very handy. Of course this game already has a very manageable inventory, so that idea can't be used directly (props for that, the sorting system is very good)

Thanks for your responses!

edit: I forgot to say that I bought some stuff for Tribes so that I became a VIP for 1,5 times exp and coins, the VIP system was similar to the Club Membership, just permanent if you bought coins for more than 10 euros. On the other hand, they sold their weapons and classes for ridiculous amounts so that wasn't very good either.

 

Information!

To answer the "why" question, I first repeat what I said before: the loot! Now, why should you care about the loot? Because of the answer to the "level" question: loot depends ONLY on dungeon level. If you need more zero-talent items (because you only have so many talents to allocate), you WANT TO replay lower levels for the zero-talent loot. Make sense?

And besides, low-level loot sells for exactly the same amount of gold as high-level loot. Price depends on rarity, not level, so you will always profit off of loot from any adventure.

Lastly, to answer the "nature of chests" question: the level range for the for-gold (or for-pizza) chests is stated when you go shopping. The range you get from an adventure is more narrow, something like plus-or-minus two levels. Thus, if you know what sort of loot you need, you can purchase or adventure as appropriate.

Make sense?

 

I agree with a lot of the sentiment in the original post, with the exception that I will definitely be paying to unlock the premium adventures. $10 for seven (I think) extra adventures seems like outstanding value, overshadowed only by the fact that the entire game is free to play.

On the topic of chests, well I'll preface this by saying that I'm much more interested in the single-player experience than the multiplayer. Anyway, I haven't yet bought any chests (either for gold or pizza) simply because I feel that doing so would make opening the chests that I earn at the end of each battle less exciting and therefore lessen my enjoyment of the game. I accept that it may be only me that feels this way...

Perhaps being campaign-focused I am simply not BM's target customer. But, in my opinion, the campaign is incredible and deserving of my money to say thanks for making such a great game.

 

Oh, not at all! This game was designed from the beginning to focus on single-player. Then, when a massive groundswell of support for multiplayer happened, they gave multiplayer some priority as well.

 

In that case I must confess to being a little confused by the pricing of some items, although I know that they're subject to change. 330 pizza for eleven (I counted them this time) new adventures compared to 320 pizza for 4 extra character models somehow seems wrong to me. I feel like the extra adventures could, even should, be twice that much while the figures are a little expensive at the moment.

 

Feel free to posit your "ideal prices": lots of people have feedback on this very thing. Myself, I don't know what to suggest.

 

I'm with you i don't assume to price the work of others as i think that is up to them unless i feel I'm being ripped off or that something is overpowered and priced out of range.

The skins i actually think are under priced as someone who got all the skins when they where free i still only used maybe 4 of them, the ones i related to in one way or another and i think that is a good way to go at it. Not just buying them all because you can this is a role playing game at its core after all.

 

I posted to my local forum on the cost of playing Card Hunter. (forum post link). I'm reposting it here, I thought it might be useful feedback to Blue Manchu, because it shows one players perception of how much the game costs.

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Heres my thoughts on the best way to spend pizza. This also gives you an idea of how much the game costs.

Disclaimers

• I haven't spent a cent yet and I'm having a great time. Spending money is completely optional. I mainly want to spend money to support this game which is catering exactly to my tastes.
• Bear in mind that I only play Single Player. The best way to spend money is probably completely different for Multiplayer fans (where I imagine you would want to spend all your money trying to acquire rare powerful cards).
• I haven't hung out in the official forums. No doubt someone who haunts the forums would have more accurate advice.

Pizza Cost

• 330 Pizza $10
• 690 Pizza $20
• 1800 Pizza $50

(Note that the game also gives you some free pizza during the campaign).

Best Way to Spend Pizza (Single Player). Best first.

• 330 Pizza 11 Treasure Hunts Pack

The game comes with many free campaigns. This pack gives you all 11 of the optional paid campaigns. As this is the only real "content" that you can buy, I think its the best use of $10. Everything else is gravy.

• 200 Pizza 4 Multiplayer Starter Packs

There are 5 multiplayer starter packs (fully geared parties). You get 1 for free. Additional starter packs are 50 Pizza each. All the gear is shared between Single Player and Multiplayer. So if you unlock 5 starter packs, you have a 5 parties worth of gear to choose from right from the start (mix of high and low level gear).

• 240 Pizza 3 Alternate Figurines

This is purely cosmetic and optional. Each additional figurine is 80 Pizza. How much you'll spend here depends on taste. For example, I think the default (free) Human Wizard is the coolest looking Human Wizard, whereas the Default Elf Wizard is the worst of the available options.

Total = 770 Pizza

You can buy all that with $20, once you count the free pizza from the campaign (and you'll have some pizza to spare).

No doubt there will be more optional paid content down the line, but the discount for bulk buying pizza is not huge, so I'd just buy what you need now and see how you feel about the game once the new content is released.

You can also spend money on gear (either directly in the shop, buying chests of random rare loot, or a subscription to win bonus loot while adventuring). I haven't mentioned that above. For single player, buying gear would probably ruin alot of the fun of adventuring to find gear yourself. The main advantage of collecting gear in singleplayer is that it gives you more options to build different types of decks. In Multiplayer you probably want tons of gear to build optimised decks (like any CCG).

So the cost of Card Hunter roughly turns out to be:

• Free To enjoy the full singleplayer campaign and friendly multiplayer is completely free.
• $10 Buys you all the optional content at launch.
• $20 Gets you cosmetic figurines and a bunch of gear, in addition to the content.
• $50-200 ?? Competitive Multiplayer. I don't know how much it would cost.

The great thing about deck design is that you have a number of talent points to spend to use higher level gear. The number of talent points you have increases as you rise in level. That means even a high level character has a use for level 1 gear, because you don't have enough talent points to use the best of everything. So a level 20 character might wield a powerful sword, but use a cheap level 1 shield (or vice versa).

Tony

 

Let me start by saying nice job as i started the text shaking my head at you saying "Heres my thoughts on the best way to spend pizza. This also gives you an idea of how much the game costs." I was expecting something far less informed and calculated so thanks for that. That said i don't think you should set the price tag on competitive multiplayer higher than any of the others as you would most likely still want the skins and pvp packs and you don't really need to spend more than that to be competitive.

 

Ok thanks. Like I said, I haven't touched multiplayer. My guess may have been pessimistic based on other CCGS. Note that I did say that "friendly" multiplayer is free. I just assumed that competitive multiplayer would be full of sharks with optimised decks, and you'd have to spend to compete. But I guess Card Hunter isn't like other CCGs in that you don't have to keep buying booster packs to acquire 4 copies of each of the best cards.

 

Just one comment on that: Yes, the *membership* itself is temporary. But the *benefits* of the membership are permanent. Getting one extra item per fight is a huge and permanent advantage. I especially like that if the fight guarantees you a certain rarity of item, the membership item will be at least that rare too.